> Last week, I watched with bewilderment as India’s most vociferous talk show host, Arnab Goswami, repeatedly asked his guests if they expected an Indian diplomat who is paid $4,180 a month to pay her domestic servant $4,500 a month. Meanwhile an American guest, Lisa Curtis, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, tried to make a point: “If somebody cannot afford to have domestic help, then they don’t have domestic help.”
I had a few Indian friends in college who all lamented the lack of servants in their American day-to-day. One woman I knew recalled having 6 or 7 servants, but described herself as coming from just a normal, slightly-upper-middle class family.
It really stuck with me over the years. Growing up in the U.S., servants have a kind of old-world upper-class, if not crusty and exploitive, vibe.
Yet I've found myself over the years, as free-time disappeared into work and salaries increased, hiring a maid to come in once a month to clean house and a gardener to mow my lawn and tidy my plants once every couple of weeks. I've hired tutors and other private instructors, a fixit guy who comes and does other maintenance on my home every once in a while and so on. My wife and I have toyed with having a cook come in once a week and prepare a bunch of meals.
I'm sure if pressed I could come up with a half dozen other people I've hired on for their physical labor at one time or another. If needed, I'm sure most of them would become "live in servants" for the right price and accommodations.
It's also not uncommon in my area for families to hire Au Pairs which is really just a fancy way of saying live-in Nanny/house maid, which is a servant's title. They're given fairly little pay, maybe $1200/mo and room and board in exchange for child care and some house chores/personal assistant work. In other areas dedicated personal assistants are quite common. And I've seen people setup "internships" for their personal businesses which are so tied to their personal lives that the work is usually just personal assisting for intern pay.
Yet in the U.S. we've allergic to calling these people "servants" because it seems menial and disparaging I guess.
I'm curious though, where does the concept of "servant" actually end? Is my mechanic a servant? Or is he not because I go to his place for him to do the work instead of having him come to mine?
Having lived in the US, and then having encountered 'servants' in other countries, a striking difference is the respect for the person when they are not 'on duty'. In the US, when I go to a restaurant, I am being 'served', but after the waiter gets off work he's a full and equal neighbor of mine under both law and custom. A lifetime servant is conditioned to be deferential, in every part of their life, not just while working. Or said another way, they are always 'working' - oftentimes from birth until death. There is a stark difference in hiring a cook to come over and cook - and when he's not cooking for you be able to have his own family, hobbies, political motivations and all the rest of his life - and having a cook who 'serves' you - full stop. There is a fundamental difference between these perspectives. I believe this is why the idea of a 'servant' is so distasteful to an American. Though again, it took meeting and interacting with true 'servants' (outside the US) to even become aware of the distinction.
In the US, when I go to a restaurant, I am being 'served', but after the waiter gets off work he's a full and equal neighbor of mine under both law and custom.
That's definitely true. An interesting cultural difference even further in that direction, that I noticed as an American who moved to Denmark, is that in Scandinavia the equality extends even into the restaurant. I'm not really being "served" at a restaurant, but rather the expectation is that we're interacting in a professional setting as equals. Perhaps partly due to culture, partly due to the lack of tipping, and partly due to the fact that the waiter likely has the same socioeconomic position as their customers, there isn't really an obsequious service-oriented relationship, and it's definitely not the case that the customer is always right. It's more like, their job is to take care of business at the restaurant, and they'll aim to do it well but expect respectful treatment in return, like any other professional employee in any other job.
(It's possible things are different at really high-end places that aim to impress international customers, like the $200/plate restaurants and $500/night hotels, but I don't have any personal experience patronizing such establishments.)
Heh...as a Danish person, I think part of that distinction also is that Denmark has a really bad service culture compared to the US. It does seem to be changing. But I feel like Danes are a pretty proud (and/or headstrong) folk with very strong (and sometimes misguided, see Janteloven) notions around class and equality.
I feel like many Danes who work in the service sector project this attitude that they're really above the work and that the customers are a complete imposition on their time and energy. That's why I'm always so impressed when I get a really nice waiter in CPH or just shopping at a grocery store like Irma.
I think you're right about the high-end places -- I've only been to one fancy place one (cause, yikes! the prices) and they did act very differently because it was so expensive. But by and large, yes, I agree, they tend to see it more as a "job" than "service."
You're not to think you are anything special.
You're not to think you are as good as us.
You're not to think you are smarter than us.
You're not to convince yourself that you are better than
us.
You're not to think you know more than us.
You're not to think you are better than us.
You're not to think you are good at anything.
You're not to laugh at us.
You're not to think anyone cares about you.
You're not to think you can teach us anything.*
Wow. Just wow. Needless to say, a lot of American go-getters and super-achievers would find that bitterly stultifying.
They don't even seem that strange as an American. It's just (a parody of) typical conservative Protestant small-town mentality. Much of Scandinavia at the time was made up of religious, Protestant small towns, with most of the population engaged in farming or fishing (and the novel in question was set in such a town). People in small-town and rural America don't like big-city, degree-and-money-having people who "think they're better", either. Sinclair Lewis's 1920 novel Main Street, about small-town American attitudes, has some loose parallels.
I think the same is true even today in the US. Some of the people who're lionized in Palo Alto or NYC would be shunned in much of the "heartland", if they flaunted their wealth or education and came across as thinking they were a "super-achiever". You're allowed to be rich, but you're expected to act somewhat humble and "down-to-earth" about it and not see yourself as better than other kinds of people (especially farmers, who have their own mythos). Warren Buffet, a lifelong midwesterner, is an example of being rich but still sort of pulling that off.
Hope you understand that this is not an actual law, but a piece of satire describing social norms in a smaller provincial town in the beginning of the twentieth century. This was a very different and much more traditional and hierarchical society, and the attitudes bitops describe more stem from the reaction against these norms which happened in the 60ies and 70ies.
Totally agree! Interesting though that Denmark has better social mobility than the US, even though Denmark has historical attitudes like the Law of Jante, while the US have "The American Dream."
It could just be because I tend to find American customers really over-bearing and unreasonable (the "customer is always right" thing makes some people feel entitled to be jerks towards staff), but to me the Danish non-service feels refreshing, though I've definitely heard other people describe it as "bad service". I don't feel it's particularly bad service myself; stuff generally gets done fine, and it's not like I'm waiting hours for my food or they're dumping things on me or anything. They treat me the same way I'd treat someone at work at my own job: well and professionally, but not as if I'm their servant and must please them at all costs.
Though I think it is widely regarded as unseemly to treat people differently according to a ranking of professions or wealth, the US is not actually a classless society, and in many social settings certain amounts of deference are expected as the default even when people are off the clock. With the number of parties this time of year, if you look for it it can be a little ugly.
Another example that readily comes to mind is the comments in response to Mario Batali suggesting bankers as Time man of the year in the vein of Hitler and Mussolini a couple years ago. Many of those comments, rather than focusing on the quip being offensive or stupid, primarily complained that he should be more deferential to a great portion of his restaurant customers.
Throughout history many artists have criticized their patrons, and today there's the widely claimed ideal of not penalizing everyone from unskilled workers to professionals and business owners for their political beliefs that are independent of their employers and customers, yet the reality is different even if sometimes manifests itself subtly.
You cannot figure out the "servant" business in India without considering the caste system. We get the income inequality side pretty well, it makes sense. But until the caste crap gets replaced by a different currency, being/having a servant is a different concept from a westerner's.
India doesn't have much income inequality. Their Gini is 33, same ballpark as France, Bangladesh and the UK. (For comparison, Denmark is at 25 and the US is at 45.)
33 by the World Bank, 36.8 by the CIA. Using the CIA's numbers rather than the world Bank, India is comparable to New Zealand or Japan. It's still well below the US (45) or the world as a whole (39).
India's problem is poverty, not inequality. Much as first world hipsters try to conflate the two, they are not the same thing.
Bear in mind that "income" is a loose concept in India. A lot of the economy is 'under the table'. So while someone may report an "income" of $1000/month, their actual take may be 10x or more. Most Indians outside the salaried sector don't pay income taxes. And there are tax loopholes (agricultural income comes to mind) which allow people to shield massive amounts of income.
Thanks for that info, like many people I had always assumed that India was especially unequal, and this was the cause of many of its social problems. The more you know...
I would agree, but life in a city like Kolkata is very different from a place like tribal Odisha. Sheer numbers (as opposed to percentages) are more important when you get in the hundreds of millions.
the "caste crap" has increasingly less to do with people being "servants" - its more an income and education thing. In fact - being from a "lower caste" in India - actually makes getting into the IITs (best engg. colleges) & IIMs ( best management colleges) and pretty much everywhere else a cake walk due to flawed affirmative action programs.
I've never been to the US. But I recently watched a series of YouTube videos on Floyd Mayweather's personal life. He lives with a retinue of about a dozen very attractive female "personal assistants", ranging from the masseuse to the cook and the secretary. It was very clear from the videos that these people were on call 24/7, and their functions included sexual services. If this doesn't fit the definition of servant, then what does? The US seems to have an aversion to the concept of servant, not to the reality.
Admittedly I haven't seen that video and I'm not very familiar with Floyd Mayweather but you should take anything you see on American light-entertainment television with a healthy dose of skepticism. It's likely the women were friends or actresses hired by either Mayweather or the production to act as staff during filming, to raise his apparent status. This is extremely common in "reality" television.
Not saying there's nobody in the US with a staff of 12 but it strains credulity- and the "sexual services" is definitely not true or he'd be up on charges.
If you post the videos someone can probably attest to the reputation of the program that produced it. Was it MTV Cribs?
>"The US seems to have an aversion to the concept of servant, not to the reality."
I hope this is deadpan sarcasm.
You're drawing an analogy between sub-living wage housemaids to the for-television version of an exceptionally flamboyant professional athletes entourage.
Worse, you're extrapolating the latter - the promotional image of a singular talent, the elite prizefighter of a generation, who earns the U.S. median yearly income every 1.5 seconds in a 12 round fight - to be somehow representative of "the US".
> Last week, I watched with bewilderment as India’s most vociferous talk show host, Arnab Goswami, repeatedly asked his guests if they expected an Indian diplomat who is paid $4,180 a month to pay her domestic servant $4,500 a month. Meanwhile an American guest, Lisa Curtis, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, tried to make a point: “If somebody cannot afford to have domestic help, then they don’t have domestic help.”
I am not sure where the figure of $4,500 is coming from. $9.50/h * 60 hours * 4 weeks is $2,280/month. I am using 60 hours a week rather then 40, considering that servants probably work longer hours. The US law was clearly broken in this case because the servant was not part of the diplomatic staff and was brought to this country under false pretenses.
However, to all of you who are now screaming for equality, please remember that in India the solution of "if you can't afford to pay your servant well, you should not have one" is NOT a solution. The simple fact is, there are a lot of middle (and lower middle) class people in India who can not (or will not) pay their servants more than they already do. If the laws pass that require servants to be paid more, some servants will be lucky enough to make more money as a result, others will starve to death because they will go from making $64/month to nothing at all. Unless you first address the issue of people willing to work for such a low wage, because they have no other options, you will only cause further misery.
> If the laws pass that require servants to be paid more, some servants will be lucky enough to make more money as a result, others will starve to death because they will go from making $64/month to nothing at all.
Replace "servant" with any low-paying job. That's the old argument for ending the minimum wage. How many people starve to death in countries with a minimum wage? What actually happens is that wealth gets redistributed. The masses will revolt against the wealthy before they'd starve.
You can not compare low paid workers in US to the once in India. US has some social safety nets. Admittedly, not a lot, but US has food stamps, and assistive housing, and an economy that's working, maybe not well, but well enough. India has none of those. Many people in India lack basic things like drinking water. You can not compare the two.
Lets say tomorrow India passes a law that requires, under penalty of jail, for everyone to pay their servants at least $X per month, and as a result of this law 20% of the servants loose their job. If the government does nothing to support those people, what's going to happen to them?
It's impossible to create a social safety net? When they have dirty drinking water that's largely because they don't have a minimum wage. In computer terms this is called bootstrapping. You convert from a backwards country to a developed country via (in part by) a minimum wage. Many other countries have done it. So can India.
Income taxes, enforced. India has plenty of money and resources, and would have more of both after adopting a minimum wage because labor would be better utilized. It might be hard but don't tell me it can't happen or that people will starve to death.
You are right. Step 1, fix the woefully broken legal system in India. Step 2, streamline the crippling and impossible to navigate bureaucracy. Step 3, create a functional income tax collection apparatus in a mostly cash society. Step 4, solve the drinking water and sewage problems. Step 5, convince the majority of the country inhabitants that the cast system is bad (they do not think so). ... Step X, implement an Cross the board minimum wage.
There you go. I'd start with step 5. At the root level of India's problems is the widespread belief that not everyone deserves equal opportunity. The faster that belief is changed the faster the other steps will be achieved.
wow yet another westerner sitting on their high horse of "we know what's right for you" - the caste system has little or nothing to do with this. And these steps are far from as trivial as you make them sound. If the biggest economy of the world is totally failing at preventing homelessness and sky high medical costs - do you really think its that easy for India which for all means and purposes has only truly started developing over the last 30 odd years can just do that?
Germany - which is one of the most developed nations in the WORLD - didnt have a minimum wage until now (except for individually bargained ones in specific sectors by unions).. It is only after tremendous pressure that the newly formed government has agreed to have one starting next year.
I am not sure if you were responding to me. But I just wanted to clarify that I think those steps are very difficult indeed. I don't think it's trivial at all to implement the changes I listed, and would take time. And that minimum wage can only be properly implemented once you get a lot of the other problems resolved.
>and would have more of both after adopting a minimum wage because labor would be better utilized
How does that work? If someone has an especially productive task, that means that they can afford to pay more than current wages, there is nothing stopping them offering higher wages right now.
One of many ways to see it: Ultra low wage workers work long hours and spend all their money to barely survive, thus confront great difficulty in improving their skills. In the US a minimum wage worker can have the funds and time to become a software developer.
That certainly sounds plausible, but that doesn't sound like what a person would call "labor better utilized". But I do see the point: when people have low incomes, they are unable to invest in their own human capital. If possible it would make more sense to target poor people through welfare than through the minimum wage, but I'm don't know the practicalities of implementing either policy in India.
Workers using more of their potential is labor better utilized to improve the economy. When minimum wage workers become software developers a software company arises, and then a restaurant to serve them, and so on. A basic income (welfare for anyone) would work even better to improve the average standard of living, but not necessarily the economy.
If the laws pass that require servants to be paid more, some servants will be lucky enough to make more money as a result, others will starve to death because they will go from making $64/month to nothing at all.
In a way, this sort of proves that not having a servant IS an option in India. If laws pass that push people not to hire help they can't afford, they will stop hiring. I know that's not the point you're trying to make, but it's worth considering.
That said, I'm curious: why you do you think people in India won't go without hired help? Is it a cultural/historical thing? Or something else? (I ask this not knowing your background).
yes it is very much a cultural thing (see my longer comment) & often just makes economic sense. The argument that they are underpaid is relatively flawed. Servants in cities make much more than they would make if they stayed in their towns or villages an did nothing / worked on someone elses farm. If there is a minimum wage in all sectors with unorganized labour (construction, farming etc) - then yes - these people will be tempted to move there. But really - if you're making 10x cleaning a few houses a day - which is in no way risky / life threatening - why would you go work on a construction site or spend your days on a farm in 30+degrees C of heat?
If they're making 10x as much as a farm worker, including benefits, then doesn't that mean they're already making a living wage? A minimum wage probably wouldn't affect them significantly in that case.
But is the article wrong then? Why would someone with 10x the income of a farm worker villager live in a shanty town without water?
because that's living in big cities unfortunately. Taking Bombay as an example - where in some areas the cost per square foot of an apartment is easily as high as 1600 USD (100000 INR) - even a shanty is a luxury for many. Also you have to realize - a village in india != a village in the developed world. Likely his shanty has tv, water for a few hours a day that fill up an overhead tank and has a doctor nearby - all or some of which may not be true in his village.
What is life in the village like? I'll admit my first reaction upon reading this is to think "that doesn't sound very pleasant" but maybe it's a lot better relative to where this person came from. Why are people moving to the city?
> If the laws pass that require servants to be paid more, some servants will be lucky enough to make more money as a result, others will starve to death because they will go from making $64/month to nothing at all.
Would you also be opposed to raising the US minimum wage because of the same reason?
actually people would still hire them - on the black market - with lower wages - just like most of the agricultural sector in the US with mexicans. You cant stop the free market.
> I'm curious though, where does the concept of "servant" actually end? Is my mechanic a servant? Or is he not because I go to his place for him to do the work instead of having him come to mine?
A mechanic is a specialist. You likely can't repair your car so you have to purchase that service. Servants are just a plain time-to-money arbitrage. A maid isn't significantly better at vacuuming than you are, so you are just trading a surplus of your money for more free time.
And yes it is exploitative in that it puts a much higher value on your time than on your servants. Suppose a maid saves you 1 hour/week in household chores which you then use for working, earning you $X. But you only pay your maid $Y, a value likely much smaller than $X. The difference between the values is how much your maid has saved you by doing household chores for you.
I don't think this is a good model. F'rinstance you can have something delivered or drive to the store yourself. Are you "exploiting" the postman? Do you think he feels exploited?
The difference here is that you're not paying the postman to drive to the store for you alone, you're paying for one tiny fraction of his rounds. It's simply a matter of efficiency.
I don't think it is necessarily exploitative, even in the sense you describe. Imagine a world where both person A and person B work 4 hours a day, and clean their own houses 4 hours a day. Person A, due to the nature of his work/skills, produces more per unit time at his job then person B. Both of them could make more money if person A spends 8 hours at his job, person B spends 8 hours cleaning both houses, and they split person B's earnings evenly.
Another way of looking at this situation is the marginal value of time. There are 24 hours in a day. Assume you sleep for 8 of them, you have 12 waking hours. At this point, you might be willing to spend a hour cleaning your house. Now, imagine that you spend another 8 hours at work (but have the same amount of total income). In this situation you only have 4 hours of free time. In this case, you would likely be willing to spend more money to keep that free time, because you have less of it. This is also why we often pay more for overtime.
Yeah, I think I agree with you. But playing devil's advocate, my handyman might be called a "Groundskeeper" or similar if he was full-time and a servant...and to me (who's not handy at all) he's a specialist as well.
'specialist' should really be measured in comparison to how well the average person or perhaps 85th percentile person can perform the job, not whether they're better than their employer.
Isn't exploitation based on the idea that you're manipulating some part of the system to pay someone less than they're worth? If maids are typically worth $Y and you pay the maid $Y, that seems fair to me.
Yes - this is my point too - from an elitist western perspective it maybe exploitation - but the servants are not indentured slaves who dont have an option to go find better paying work! They are earning what the market is ready to give them and all of Indias middle class didn't get together one day and decide to manipulate that rate!
not that. the caste system has nothing to do with it AT ALL. my cook was a higher caste than my family was. Caste system is yet another concept people from the west who've watched a couple of documentaries about India like to throw around. You dont understand it - it doesnt work the way it used to. Being from a "lower caste" is actually a damn boon in todays India. IF you want to get into a decent engineering college atleast.
I am an african from africa currently in the US giving my perspective.We have always had a house maid,we call them "house girls" and they are usually in the mid teens going up.Most families i knew had one too.Typically these are young girls from the rural places,they go to the city,work as house maids for a year or two and they go home and get married.
This has nothing to do with caste system and everything to do with "cheap labor",if there were no minimum wages laws in america or if americans were getting paid much much much more than they are,it would also have been common here.
Parents send their kids here to day care here because its cheaper than having a "house girl",if the other way was possible,the other way would be more common.
If I purchase stocks for $X and then someone immediately comes and asks to buy those stocks for 50% more than $X I would absolutely accept (barring special circumstances). But if I pay someone $X to clean my house for an hour, and then someone asks me to clean their house for 50% more than $X I would absolutely refuse (barring special circumstances).
This suggests that either a) a maids time is worth much less than mine or b) the market price for cleaning services is severely depressed below its "true price".
Only a few days before Khobragade’s choreographed detention, New York’s heady prosecutors drew up a litany of charges of medical- insurance fraud against 49 Russian diplomats to the tune of $1.5 million. These 49 Russians now figure in a criminal complaint unsealed in the same Manhattan court, where India’s acting consul general was produced for a $250,000 bail hearing last week. Of these, 11 Russian diplomats continue to work at the Russian consulate in New York or at Moscow’s permanent mission to the United Nations in the Turtle Bay area of Manhattan.
So when Preet Bharara, the attorney for the Southern District of New York, unsealed the criminal complaint against the Russians in court in his usual flashy style, reporters who cover Bharara expected at least a few of the 11 Russians still within the reach of New York’s law enforcement to be paraded before them: it would have been a precursor to Khobragade’s arrest and subsequent bail. But nothing of that sort happened. Instead, when Bharara’s men set out in quest of the alleged offenders, with handcuffs in their pockets, they were promptly restrained by the US state department, according to authoritative sources who spoke to this writer. The state department told Bharara’s office that all the 11 serving Russian diplomats on US soil had diplomatic immunity and could not be arrested.[1]
This entire Khobragade incident reeks of political grandstanding. Someone wanted to divert attention away from a certain incident - either connected to politics in India or in the region - and used this to help orchestrate it.
Kinda like how Martha Stewart was incarcerated to make a larger point.[2]
Your mechanic and most of the others will give you an itemized bill, and you can't order him to make you a cup of tea for free.
In India and the Middle East this concept of "servitude" is really just slavery - lower class people are basically owned by wealthy families for their entire lives, are are given bare sustenance in return for total control over their labor and time, without conditions or restraint over when and how their labor can be used. Furthermore their work "contracts" actually prevent them from leaving or "quitting", and the legal systems in those countries will actually enforce these contracts and essentially uphold ownership of these "servants" (as did the Indian high court in this case apparently).
In all the cases you are describing, the work is part of a regulated labor market, where there are conditions and laws against exploitation, that are actually enforced as has been witnessed in this case.
One of the most objectionable parts of this whole story is that an Indian court put out a warrant for this woman's arrest for quitting her job ("absconding") and then took her husband and child into custody!
Complaining about barbaric treatment when you have legally enforced indentured servitude and punish family members for alledged crimes, is real chutzpah.
>They're given fairly little pay, maybe $1200/mo and room and board
While that is a servant, such an employee is a domestic servant who makes a good deal more than the typical fast-food worker, intern, or graduate student. Such a job easily falls within humane labor standards: you're given free lodgings in an expensive area, probably in a nice house, some amount of money on top of that (which, again, goes much further when you've got no rent to pay), and hopefully humane working hours. Plenty of people I know would do this job in preference to their actual jobs.
Yeah when you describe it in the best possible terms it sounds wonderful.
Putting in that 9-5 every day "servanting," then returning to my spacious and luxurious servants quarters with the windows that open upon la jardin to pursue my interests and hobbies until dinner is called at 7PM.
Or perhaps about town to enjoy some of my filthy lucre (which should be also covering some sort of retirement and probably taxes but isn't), or I know, I'll have some of my friends come over, the Master and Mistress of the house certainly don't mind me having a social life like a normal person!
I'm not trying to say it's truly a nice deal. I'm saying that it's certainly better than the other low-end jobs available. I'm the guy who thinks every worker should have a union and wage labor should be abolished entirely, don't forget that perspective!
Specialization and number of customers seem to be pretty clear distinguishers (where servant sort of implies lots of different tasks for a single household).
> We still call all those people service providers.
Well, I'm wondering if we're using "service providers" as a euphemism for certain classes of servants because we're uncomfortable with the word. I've never actually heard anybody in the U.S. say they have "servants", despite having a Au Pairs, Personal Assistants, Live-in gardeners etc.
At what point does my maid, who I personally contract with become a servant rather than a service provider? Does she have to come every day? Do I have to be her only employer? Can she just come once a week?
I think in reality what Americans are afraid of is not "servants" per se, but "servitude" and all that implies.
Yes, I was sort of trying to point out that "service" has the same word root in there.
I don't think I've ever had a conversation with someone that had an Au Pair or live-in gardener, so of course I haven't heard them talk about their servants. I've known people who were sort of uncomfortable about paying a maid (but I guess this was more rooted in the protestant work ethic than any sort of queasiness over servitude, never mind that these people weren't very religious).
> I've known people who were sort of uncomfortable about paying a maid
We've also been very uncomfortable with the yard service and maid service because it seem like something we should be doing. But long hours and a continuously ugly yard and messy house eventually solved those debates.
>Growing up in the U.S., servants have a kind of old-world upper-class, if not crusty and exploitive, vibe.
In parts of Mexico and South America I have seen lavish, large homes built for U.S. retirees, where the real estate agent indicated without shame that certain small and often un-windowed rooms were for live-in help. What would the Americans, who move into these homes, call the people (mostly women) who will inhabit these rooms?
I assume they would call them servants, nannies, or au pairs. The later two would be hard to get away with if they were retirees (no children I assume), they would be calling them that just to avoid calling them servants.
Just because some retirees retire to developing countries so that they can pretend to have old-money and have servants does not mean that having servants is viewed by Americans as normal.
I had a middle-class upbringing, (certainly not upper-middle, but money was rarely a source of stress or unease in my family, so not really lower-middle either). One of my aunt/uncles were very solidly upper-middle though, and had for several years a series of "au pairs" who were ostensibly in the US first and foremost to study. Even this wasn't "normal" to my family, the entire arrangement made us very uncomfortable.
I had a few Indian friends in college who all lamented the lack of servants in their American day-to-day. One woman I knew recalled having 6 or 7 servants, but described herself as coming from just a normal, slightly-upper-middle class family.
It really stuck with me over the years. Growing up in the U.S., servants have a kind of old-world upper-class, if not crusty and exploitive, vibe.
Yet I've found myself over the years, as free-time disappeared into work and salaries increased, hiring a maid to come in once a month to clean house and a gardener to mow my lawn and tidy my plants once every couple of weeks. I've hired tutors and other private instructors, a fixit guy who comes and does other maintenance on my home every once in a while and so on. My wife and I have toyed with having a cook come in once a week and prepare a bunch of meals.
I'm sure if pressed I could come up with a half dozen other people I've hired on for their physical labor at one time or another. If needed, I'm sure most of them would become "live in servants" for the right price and accommodations.
It's also not uncommon in my area for families to hire Au Pairs which is really just a fancy way of saying live-in Nanny/house maid, which is a servant's title. They're given fairly little pay, maybe $1200/mo and room and board in exchange for child care and some house chores/personal assistant work. In other areas dedicated personal assistants are quite common. And I've seen people setup "internships" for their personal businesses which are so tied to their personal lives that the work is usually just personal assisting for intern pay.
Yet in the U.S. we've allergic to calling these people "servants" because it seems menial and disparaging I guess.
I'm curious though, where does the concept of "servant" actually end? Is my mechanic a servant? Or is he not because I go to his place for him to do the work instead of having him come to mine?